The story appears on

Page A6

May 1, 2020

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

HomeWorld

Vanity van relief for lady cops

BOLLYWOOD vanity vans — the luxury trailers where stars relax and prepare for movie shoots — are providing relief to female police officers on coronavirus lockdown duty in India’s financial hub Mumbai.

With about 6,500 COVID-19 cases, Mumbai has one of the highest infection rates in the country and police now patrol the streets and man roadblocks to limit the spread of the disease.

Vanity vans — equipped with baths and beds, soaps, sanitizers, sanitary pads and also biscuits — last week began parking by roads and highways to support police women.

“I was on 12-hour shifts on the road and would go back to the police station each time I had to use the washroom. Some of us are on the road 24 hours,” Nilophar Shaikh, a Mumbai police sub inspector, said.

“I had never entered a vanity van before,” she said. “It had two rooms, a nice washroom and a resting space too.”

With the lockdown suspending Bollywood movie shoots indefinitely, a vanity van owner teamed up with a filmmakers’ collective and a charity to put the vans to good use for free.

Filmmakers said the scheme served a dual purpose: it made toilets accessible to police and gave jobs to drivers and cleaners who were among Bollywood workers hardest hit by the lockdown.

An estimated 13,000 police officers are out on patrol to help enforce the lockdown, a Mumbai police spokesman said, of which about 20 percent are women.


 

Copyright 漏 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

娌叕缃戝畨澶 31010602000204鍙

Email this to your friend